"With all the focus on the legal aspects of privacy and the impact on global trade there's been little discussion of why you want privacy and why it's intrinsically important to you as an individual," said Adam Joinson, professor of behavior change at the University of the West of England in Bristol, who coined the term "digital crowding" to describe excessive social contact and loss of personal space online.

Powers sets the stage for his proposed digital philosophy by warning us that digital crowding is robbing us of depth.

Not all privacy threats on SNSs [social network sites] come from loss of information privacy or control over personal information — they may also come from excessive social contact, or digital crowding.